Date and Location: March 1888, Dead Man’s Hole, San Diego County, California

Hunters exploring a canyon met a tangle of logs, boulders and underbrush. Their attention was directed toward loud crashing noises where upon turning they saw an immense hairy bear gorilla beast with a human Indian face. When the hunters fired a shot it turned toward the men and “the face was human!”

The beast starts scaling the rock face toward a cave up high in the canyon wall. The hunters fired again and the beast crashed to the canyon floor, and it was dead.

The hunters climbed down and examined the beast, they reported: “the face was Indian, but the teeth were like a bear’s fangs with pointed ends. The creature’s feet were huge and covered with black hair.

They left and climbed up to cave and entered it, inside they reportedly found: “eight human skulls grinned from a rock ledge, while a half-consumed sheep carcass lay on the floor. In a corner a pile of leaves and weeds indicated the creature’s bed.”

Source: A Horrible Tale From the Pages of Local History, By Herbert Lockwood, California Daily Transcript Tuesday, August 27, 1996